Sigurd Towrie writes: After being repeatedly thwarted by wet and windy weather, an evening of glorious sunshine on Thursday saw an impromptu UHI Archaeology Institute expedition to a barrow cemetery in Orkney’s West Mainland.
The goal was to secure photographs to accompany the Knowes of Trotty chapter in Professors Jane Downes and Colin Richards’ forthcoming volume, Animating the Dead: An Archaeology of Bronze Age Burial Practices in Orkney.
http://www.oxbowbooks.com/9798888571439/animating-the-dead/
With Jane and Colin were Sigurd Towrie, of the UHI Archaeology Institute, and MRes student Sue Dyke.
The Knowes of Trotty is one of the biggest Bronze Age cemeteries between Orkney and southern England and the only one of its kind in known in northern Britain. Despite its scale and grandeur, it is also a notoriously difficult site to photograph.
The site is made up of a series of 16 barrows arranged in two rows. Aligned roughly NNE-SSW, the two lines extend over 350 metres through what is now a damp, marshy landscape.
Read more about the site, with lots more amazing photos at
archaeologyorkney.com/2024/09/20/knowes-trotty-2024/
At the Knowes of Trotty, the decision to erect a barrow cemetery on the site of a possible Neolithic settlement – not to mention placing the primary burial directly on top of the remains of a structure – was a statement.
To the 2005 excavation team, it was “almost certainly a desire … to draw power and authority to themselves and their emergent ancestors by emphasising origins, situating their burial monuments upon the remains of their ‘founding-fathers’”.
A short distance to the north-east of Mound one, the remains of an Early Neolithic house were discovered in 2002. Based on its architecture, the structure clearly dated from the fourth millennium BC – built sometime between 3400BC and 3100BC.
More on that here:
http://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/knowes-of-trotty/
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